


Heart Heard of, Ghost Guessed

by x_los



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (1963)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-03-03
Updated: 2008-03-03
Packaged: 2017-11-17 12:07:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/551371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/x_los/pseuds/x_los
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stealing the contents of the Matrix from Gallifrey’s capitol is easy! And so is a desperate, naïve Theta Sigma. Depending on where you are in your personal time-line.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heart Heard of, Ghost Guessed

Title: Heart Heard of, Ghost Guessed

Author: x_los

Rating: NC-17

Pairing: Theta/Delgado!Master, Theta/Koschei

Summary: Stealing the contents of the Matrix from Gallifrey’s capitol is easy! And so is a desperate, naïve Theta Sigma. Depending on where you are in your personal time-line.

Beta: [](http://deborah-judge.livejournal.com/profile) [ **deborah_judge**  ](http://deborah-judge.livejournal.com/)  is entirely responsible for the last sex scene actually making sense, and Theta being somewhat more sympathetic. I render unto her all due praises!

A/N: For the [](http://community.livejournal.com/best_enemies/profile) **[best_enemies](http://community.livejournal.com/best_enemies/) **[Academy Relationship Challenge](http://community.livejournal.com/best_enemies/1858.html)

Word Count: About 11,312. Mostly in 24 hours. So choose one: [](http://x-los.livejournal.com/profile) [ **x_los**  ](http://x-los.livejournal.com/)  is a) Balzac, b) a robot or c) this is a trick question, Balzac was one of her robot race as well. They come for your spare time and your UST. We see through them: Master/Doctor is just Vautrin/Rastignac in shiny new packaging.

 

 

_Heart Heard Of, Ghost Guessed_

 

Set after _Claws of Axos_ and before _Frontier in Space_.

 

*** 

 

Theta felt like he’d been waiting for Koschei to make a move for most of his natural life. He’d been wandering around their room out of regulation robes for solid weeks. He did his homework sprawled temptingly on his bed, sometimes migrating to Koschei’s on the pretext that the Venusian egg crate mattress made it comfier. He kept his shirtsleeves pushed up and his tie dangled in a loose knot, the silk length of it running down his chest like a lead without a hand to guide it, like an invitation.

 

And Koschei had swallowed visibly and done nothing. Had chatted about the upcoming break, for Omega’s sake. Had asked him if he thought he might like to go hiking in the mountains. Theta hadn’t parried with an offer to kneel down in the mountain’s daisies and get an alternative cardiac workout instead by sheer force of will.

 

On the evening of that conversation Koschei groaned luxuriously in his sleep. He was obviously dreaming about something Theta would quite like to help him experience in waking life. Theta sank his teeth into his pillow to keep from screaming in frustration.

 

He was really, REALLY done with being a virgin. Every time Koschei touched him he thought he’d regenerate right there. The other day in the lab Koschei had, on spotting a bit of the solution they’d been assigned to make splattered under his chin, clucked and rubbed it off with his thumb, the motion tilting Theta’s head up and back. When he was done he’d grabbed Theta by the chin and intently examined him for any more stray droplets. Koschei had grunted with satisfaction at finding none and pronounced a pleased ‘There now.’

 

It had been friendly. Chaste. Theta had wanted to sweep everything off the lab table and slam Koschei to the black granite work surface and kiss him until they came messily in their school robes.

 

And Koschei had to know that, because Theta couldn’t keep a secret for all the worlds he longed to visit in the heavens, and his best friend wasn’t stupid. Koschei was, if anything, the more emotionally intelligent of the two of them.

 

Theta suspected, but didn’t want to face, the idea that his best friend was entirely aware of Theta’s obvious interest in him and was only not verbalizing a ‘no’ to spare Theta unnecessary shame. Koschei probably only swallowed like that because he was so damn uncomfortable with how thoroughly Theta was embarrassing himself, not because the whole Clark Gable thing (his mom was quite partial to movies from her home era, and hated watching them alone) was working and Koschei was considering the idea and not hating it.

 

Which would have been annoying if Theta had been merely attracted to Koschei. Which would have been crushing in Theta had simply been infatuated with Koschei. Which was actually eviscerating, _devastating_ to consider because Theta was completely, stupidly, blindly in love with his arrogant, brilliant, funny best friend.

 

Which is, unfortunately, about how gob smacked and rendered insecure by his emotions he’d have to be not to understand that Koschei was at least just as obsessed with him.

 

 

***

 

 

If Theta chewed his pencil one more goddamn time Koschei was going to—

 

_Going to what?_ Koschei asked himself, sardonic even in his own head, _Run back to the shower and wish he was in there with you and have yourself a good, long, cold wank about it? That’ll be what, the second time today? He’s going to catch on. No one is this hygienic._

 

_He doesn’t even know he’s doing it, that’s the worst bit._ Koschei glowered from his desk.

 

Over on his comforter, perched oh so innocently, Theta rested a hand on his thigh. He alternated between kneading the muscle and smoothing the fabric of his uniform trousers as he paged through a novel they’d been assigned.

 

Koschei wanted to keen with frustration. His fist clenched at every stroke that wasn’t his that casually drifted down the flesh Koschei so coveted with lazy prerogative. He wanted to run his hands along those evidently aching thighs and part them and take and be taken in turn and he was _really_ going to have to move his book onto his lap as casually as he could because there was no way Theta, oblivious though he was, was going to miss that.

 

If he’d had a damn drop of interest from Theta he would have drunk the dram of it dry. The other day he’d practically begged his best friend to go hiking with him, where they could be away from their parents over break, _completely_ _alone_ in the evocative woods, with all their dark possibility. Which to Koschei at least screamed ‘I’d like to bring a backpack filled exclusively with lube (and sandwiches for when we get hungry) and take you against rocks and trees and any available surfaces with no regard for the peace and tranquility of woodland creatures and tell our parents we just decided to camp and help you pull leaves out of unmentionable places later.’

 

Theta had seemed disgusted with the prospect. The other boy’s exasperated ‘Whatever.’ was hardly the ‘of course, Koschei darling, take me among the shrubs with no regard to the pokey sticks on the ground, such is our passion! In fact why wait to go hiking? Take me right now!’ he’d been holding out for.

 

And the way Theta shivered lately when Koschei touched him, like his skin was trying to crawl off his bones and escape the contact—it was enough to break Koschei’s doting adolescent hearts.

 

But sometimes he got a hint of something that he clung to and called hope. Like now, when Theta craned his elegant neck up from his work. He looked at Koschei through his long blonde lashes, those sublime blue eyes rich with the hint of something new and dangerous and thoroughly _good_.

 

“Koschei?” It dragged from Theta’s lips, and reminded Koschei, for some reason, of the way actors talked in the funny human films Theta’s mother Verity had on in the house when he dropped by to see Theta. All husky and intent.

 

“Yes?” The silence was long and taunt, and they seemed on the very verge of a place they’d never been—

 

“What chapter are we supposed to read for Ethics?” Theta blurted.

 

“What—oh, er, the one on Origins of the Noninterference Doctrine,” Koschei offered, disappointment practically choking him, “Is that all you want—well. Of course it is. I think I’ll shower before bed. See you in a bit.”

 

Koschei grabbed a bathrobe and skittered out of the room, leaving Theta to wait for the door to click shut, wait thirty recs for the footsteps to proceed away from the door, and pound his fist into Koschei’s mattress repeatedly. If he’d been in a better mood he might have thought it was funny that at least some part of his body was getting exactly what it desperately needed.

 

Air. He could do with some air. A walk would be lovely. It’d clear his head or at least keep him from giving into his urge to bury his face in Koschei’s pillows and hope the other boy stayed in the bathroom long enough for Theta to properly relieve his tension. Again.

 

He was lucky Koschei had yet to notice that his favorite black undershirt was pretty regularly missing. It always seemed to vanish into the ether after he’d worn it once and reappear mysteriously in Theta’s clean clothes hamper, washed assiduously, with absolutely no stains on it of any kind.

 

Eventually Koschei was going to catch on. No one was this crap at laundry.

 

 

***

 

 

“That mendacious, conniving bastard.” The Master, hissed, coughing, and jumped down out of his TARDIS (she had made her exterior with an inconveniently high front step just to be contrary). She was conveniently disguised as one of the neat little freestanding professorial cottages flocked about the grounds of the Academy. She was being very discreet, except for the smoke flooding out of her picturesque little wooden hobbit hole of a door.

 

She was less than pleased about the rigors of the whole Axos farrago, and would issue random noxious gassed in her temper tantrum until for as long as she damn well pleased. Effectively, that would be until she’d calmed down and he’d smoothed her ruffled extra-temporal feathers with a shiny mechanical present. He thought he’d grab her something smart from one of the laboratories and make off with it before anyone noticed they were down a whatsit. But that would have to come after he’d vented his own ire on the unsuspecting, unlucky conifer he’d parked adjacent to.

 

“ ‘Oh, I’ll go with you, Master, take me away from all this!’ ” He parodied the Doctor viciously, “ ‘I’ll just bloody well move in shall I? Oh, just kidding, hope you weren’t emotionally invested!’ Every damn time! And I always want to believe him and his vile, lying _face!_ Why, why do I always _listen_ to him!”

 

The Master kicked the silver-leafed tree spitefully, wishing its thin trunk were one of the Doctor’s shins. Some of its needles spilled off sadly and plopped down to the ground with an anticlimactic ‘blop’ noise. It did not really assuage the Master’s Doctor-related bloodlust, and certainly not his straight-up lust-lust.

 

God, he would kill for a good solid fuck: the kind that would rip that smug little grin off the Doctor’s face and leave him wrecked, overwhelmed and consumed by it. Well, to be fair, the Master conceded, he’d kill for quite a lot of things lately. But he’d _really_ give galaxies to pound the self-righteousness out of one exasperating little swot who called himself—

 

“Theta?” The Master would never have admitted to goggling, but there wasn’t really a better word for the huge-eyed double take he was doing on recognizing the back of a very familiar blonde head. The boy in question turned, curiously. He’d been strolling along the path and peered into the under-lit sweep of darkness at the periphery of the grounds, unafraid.

 

_Stupid,_ the Master thought, _don’t you know not to walk alone in the dark, unaccompanied? A pretty little thing like you doesn’t even know what I could, what I would do to you. And where am I, I wonder?_ He hadn’t been much for leaving the Theta’s side back in these days. Examining his recent behavior he couldn’t say he was doing all that much better lately.

 

He didn’t think he’d enraged his TARDIS to the point of deserving being dumped smack on top of his own past. She did have a tendency to overreact, but they were really going to have to have a chat about this. This was the kind of sloppiness or petulance the Doctor allowed _his_ TARDIS, perhaps, but the Master believed in some discipline.

 

He should walk away. He should get back in his wayward TARDIS and sulk through the fumes and get the hell off Gallifrey and out of his own timeline. He should really, really—

 

He stepped into the light and the appraising glance of his childhood sweethearts and did his best to look like he belonged on an Academy campus.

 

“I thought I might introduce myself. I’m the new xenolinguistics professor.” No he bloody well was not, the Master thought with rising panic, what was he _doing?_ But the lie spilled out of his lips thick and fast, and seemed to have an inertia all its own.

 

“Borusa said I might pick a few students of particular ability and offer them private lessons. It’s one of an instructor’s small joys, you know. Separating the milk from the cream. Cultivating the burgeoning promise of a bright young thing like you. And,” he smiled amiably, inviting the younger man into the circle of his humor, as if to imply they were in on a joke no one else got, “it means you’ll get out of those tedious standard issue lessons. They must just bore someone of your caliber to tears.”

 

Theta worried his lip and it occurred to the Master how much he’d always liked that habit. “Me, sir? But my grades are—”

 

“No reflection at all on your capabilities, from what I hear, boy. To the endless frustration of your other professors, all of whom looked ready to eat their collars at the mention of you when I spoke to them earlier. Do what you like for them, but I expect you to give me all you’re capable of while we’re working. It’s time you learned something of discipline. Am I making myself clear?” He leveled a severe gave at Theta, who, interestingly, blushed.

 

“Yes sir.” Now _that_ could be quite nice. “Who else are you taking? It’s just I’ve this one friend in particular, really talented, and—”

 

“You’re the only one I’ve any interest in,” the Master interrupted. He appreciated the plug for his younger self, but really had no desire to deal with mucking about in his personal time stream or the French Farce that would be Koschei’s inevitable jealousy of anyone else Theta so much as looked at. He knew himself too well to assume Koschei wasn’t going to seriously consider bludgeoning him in the night. Better invent some kind of non-lethal security system for his TARDIS, controllable gas or some such—it would never do to off himself over the Doctor.

 

“You’re free tomorrow evening, or so your professors inform me.” He still remembered Theta’s _schedule?_ Rassilon, now that was sad. “Why don’t you wander down and we’ll see what work we can put you to. Good evening, Theta.” He waved a dismissive hand. “Run along.” Theta turned to go, then swiveled back hesitantly.

 

“Not quite finished?” The Master mocked indulgently, and Theta looked down at his feet, and then up through his lashes, and that had always been a very pretty trick—one he’d been particularly susceptible to, and one the Doctor had reused not terribly long ago to good effect. The memory of being manipulated decided the Master in his course more fixedly than caution could erode.

 

“Theta,” the boy bit his lip, “Well, it’s just my nickname. My professors usually call me—”

 

“Theta,” the Master interrupted, “Will do just fine for our purposes. Don’t you agree? And you may call me Master. I find my fuller title a bit stifling.”

 

Theta’s tongue darted out to moisten his lips unconsciously. “That’s a little informal, sir.”

 

“Isn’t it, though?” The Master shot back. “I’ll see you next twilight.”

 

The boy made to leave, only to snap back around too eagerly when the odd new Professor called him.

 

“Oh, and Theta?” The Master smiled benevolently, and for the first time Theta really understood his mother’s expression ‘crocodile smile.’ He shivered, though he wasn’t cold. He felt like his skin was being touched though it was only the older man’s hooded gaze resting oh so properly on his face. He felt like they were standing much too far apart.

 

“Sweet dreams,” he said, and Theta had a feeling they would be.

 

 

***

 

 

The Master was a complicated man, given to ambivalence. With a significant portion of his energy he was considering how he’d stumbled upon the ideal time frame in which to implement his long-held scheme to steal the contents of the Matrix, as no one would be looking for him in his own past.

 

He could create an identity for himself as a Professor here relatively easily: just hack in, tweak a document or nine and register one student for private lessons. He’d even give Theta proper credit for it. Why not, he was feeling generous.

 

The rest of him was realizing with mingled amusement, horror and anticipation that his absolutely incandescent youthful rage over not having been Theta’s first partner might have been somewhat misplaced. Because he _had_ been, and was about to be, Theta’s first. He just hadn’t realized it at the time, and it hadn’t been quite the _right_ him.

 

Well. He couldn’t really be blamed. Time Paradoxes had to be fulfilled, didn’t they?

 

And a Time Paradox that handed you the sweet, virginal version of your currently sour, estranged lover and insisted you have at him couldn’t be all bad.

 

 

***

 

 

Theta tripped back into his room. Koschei was sitting up in his bed with the lamp on, reading. The way the butter-colored light illuminated the curve of his pale neck would have made Theta’s hearts clench if he weren’t so preoccupied.

 

“Where have you been?” Koschei demanded, because it might not be safe to wander the grounds completely alone late at night if you were as young, pretty and defenseless and he thought his best friend to be.

 

Gallifrey, to its shame, wasn’t without violent crime—it crept up through the cracks of their stultifying perfect society like radon poisoning choking out the basement of an old structure. Gallifrey lacked release valves for its inordinate amount of social pressure, and when people sinned against the prevailing norms it didn’t tend to be orderly or pretty.

 

There’d been such an attack within the year, a Dromeian girl had been found with still eyes that stared, confused, even in death. With her silver-grey robes all matted maroon. The Guard had been called out and apprehended the culprit, but the students were still a trifle on edge, and night in the capitol didn’t seem as safe and welcoming as it once had. It made Koschei itch to get himself and Theta back home, where things seemed more simple and secure.

 

“Walking,” Theta said absently, half-ignoring him, throwing off his shirt and climbing into bed without noticing the hot stare his bare torso elicited. “I qualified for private xenolinguistics lessons, apparently.”

 

This was brilliant. Theta had never wanted anyone who wasn’t Koschei before, and had begun to fear he was incapable of it. Which was quite a problem for him, as Koschei didn’t seem to want anything to do with him, at least not like _that_.

 

He loved Koschei, obviously, and couldn’t imagine not doing so, but there didn’t seem to be much point in throwing himself at someone so patently repulsed. It only hurt him and made Koschei uncomfortable. And if Koschei got too uncomfortable he wouldn’t even want to be Theta’s best friend anymore, and that was a fate worse than could be imagined.

 

The draper, elegant older professor wouldn’t even consider a little weed of a boy like him, but the very fact that he was painfully attracted to someone who might not be categorically uninterested was a victory for Theta.

 

And what a someone! Dark haired and smooth voiced with a solid Capitoline accent (so like Koschei’s, Theta admitted, and thus all the more attractive), mocking and mysterious. Nice jacket too—unusual, as everyone around here accepted the collegiate robes without dissent or deviation, even though, as a professor, Theta supposed you could probably dress however you wanted to. This Master was just so commanding, and, well, cool. Theta smiled at the ceiling dopily, settling deep into a good hard crush.

 

“What are you so cheerful about?” Koschei groused, slightly annoyed that he didn’t already know and still mentally wording a way to ask Theta never to gallivant off into the night without him again so that he wouldn’t seem as smotheringly overprotective and obviously infatuated as he was.

 

“My new xenolinguistics professor’s devastatingly handsome.” Theta said absently before realizing what he’d said and then wincing so hard he thought he’d pop a vein.

 

“What.” Koschei responded succinctly.

 

“Well I can like people, Koschei!” Theta defended himself. “I can find people sexually attractive and want to do something about it. I am seventeen, in case you haven’t noticed. People typically become interested in other people and want to pursue that interest.”

 

“What?” Koschei tried again. His Theta, steps away, sighing and giggling over some ridiculous old professor when he was right fucking _here_. It was an indignation too great to be borne. It hurt physically. What did he lack, that Theta squirmed from him and wanted other men?

 

“Not all of us are frigid, is all I mean.” Theta shot back.

 

“I am not _‘frigid,’_ ” Koschei hissed, “I—I want people! Loads of people! I’m very much not frigid!”

 

“Oh,” Theta said tightly. _Whole loads of people, but you don’t condescend to want me, even seeing how much I care about you. Fine then, I get the hint_.

 

“Good luck with that then. Sleep well, Koschei.”

 

Theta turned off his lamp and dreamed of unbuttoning high collars and the feel of a beard scraping at his neck and Koschei’s flushed face and long fingers in a confusing, flickering montage of want. He woke up hard and restless and desperately eager for twilight to come.

 

 

***

 

 

The Master made a lesson plan and felt like an utter prat. He was seducing a seventeen year old away from himself because he had failed to get same seventeen year old to properly commit in their future. It was all predicated firmly on the pathetic.

 

He spent all day working his way past the first layer of Matrix security protocols. He spent all day waiting for evening.

 

And then finally as the suns set Theta trooped down to his cottage, taking the steep hill at a swift jog. _That’s it, boy,_ the Master thought with a smirk, _run to me_.

 

“Good day, professor,” Theta smiled upon arrival, and tucked his plump lower lip between his teeth. He was a trifle flushed from the descent. “You look well this evening.”

 

It was a casual pleasantry, but the Master caught it and spun it from diffuse candy floss innocence to something diamond hard with a long glance that made a complete survey of Theta’s young body and apparently found it more than satisfactory.

 

“And you look indecently well yourself. Though I imagine it’s always so, with a healthy lad like you. Won’t you come into my parlor? It’s past time we began.” He guided Theta in with a hand at the small of his back and settled him in a plump overstuffed chair.

 

He’d asked his TARDIS to make her interior look like one of these cottages as well. While the pantry door proceeded into spatially improbable corridors and rooms, the house looked in its anterooms just as it should: a cozy, book-lined library, an intimate kitchen with an old silver-wood oak table, a dark green walled bedroom with a marvelously comfortable, worn-in bed.

 

She’d capitulated gracefully because, much to the Master’s chagrin, she adored her absentee parent. Said the Master had been nicer when the Doctor had been around. Made a fair bit of noise about missing being nestled inside and around the Doctor’s TARDIS as well. He and the Doctor had used to find their TARDISs affection for each other so entirely adorable. They had used, he frowned, to do a lot of things they didn’t talk about anymore.

 

“Something wrong?” Theta asked, observing the tight line of the Master’s jaw with concern.

 

“Nothing you need to interest yourself in, my dear. If you’d open the book on the table?” Theta did and propped it in his lap. The Master, standing, threw an arm over the back of Theta’s chair and put his chin close to the boy’s ear.

 

“What do you know,” he rumbled softly, too close to the boy’s skin, and watched Theta twitch in hastily suppressed pleasure, sensualist that he had always been, “About comparative deep structure linguistic theory?”

 

“Not a lot,” Theta breathed, staring down at his hands demurely, intently, “But I’d be delighted if you could show me, sir.”

 

“Telepathic universal grammar could be said to underlie all communication—in fact our definition of sentience is based on adherence to a mental model that allows for translation and interpretation. Though more liberal theorists argue that this model is appallingly Gallifreyan-centric. It discounts, for example, the singing gas clouds of the Rijat Cluster, which appear to move with direction and intent, but whose vocalizations we cannot decipher.

 

“Deep structure,” he put a hand on Theta’s, ostensibly to point out some illustration in the book, “Is at the core of all our thought. It creates meaning from a barren universe. Our foundations define us, insomuch as the language we use and the choices we make comprise who we are. Are you following me?”

 

“Completely, Sir.”

 

“Just call me Master—As you so astutely pointed out, it’s a little informal. And I’ll broke no undue formality between us, Theta.”

 

An audible swallow. “Yes, Master.” That was just perfect.

 

“There’s a good boy. Read me the paragraph at the top of the page.”

 

 

***

 

 

“He has the bearing of a god.” Theta enthused, his huge blue eyes deadly serious. He bustled around their room, piling things into a bag haphazardly, as if he was too distracted to really pay attention.

 

Koschei sat on his bed, arms folded across his chest. He glared at Theta’s progress and resented everything Theta touched. Each object had the other boy’s attention, while he so clearly didn’t.

 

“I think I’m going to be ill.” Koschei pronounced in finely tuned response.

 

“He’s funny, too! After our lesson we had tea. He made this remark about Borusa—I can’t even reproduce the way he said it, it was the thing he did with his eyebrows that made it so genius. I practically spit up my tea laughing. He has the best smile. And he smokes cigars, can you even imagine? And leather gloves? I could get used to that, let me tell you—”

 

“Must I?” Koschei grimaced, but Theta would not shut _up_ and didn’t even seem to notice.

 

“—just so _smooth!_ And he’s so well read! It’s not even his specialty but he offered to teach me about comparative folklore as well—did you know there’s an Earth sorcerer figure with your name? Uncanny coincidence, that. He says we can do a lot of Earth stuff, since I’m so interested and he’s actually _been_ there, visited my mother’s home era even! I actually told him she was human? And he didn’t even _blanch!_ He’s such a gentleman. I’ve never trusted anyone so immediately. I just feel like I _know_ him, like we’ve been friends for years.”

 

“Could you and your precious xenolinguistics professor just get a room already?” Koschei seethed.

 

“Oh,” Theta began to burble, “I mean, he’d never, he’s just so, and I mean he probably doesn’t even know I—”

 

“I was joking!” Koschei exploded in shock and horror. “You mean you’d actually ever consider—”

 

“Said he was attractive, didn’t I?” Theta interrupted him right back. “If someone I liked showed any interest in me I’d certainly take advantage of it!”

 

Koschei, predictably, read Theta’s intent in the comment all wrong. He didn’t hear the pleading note in Theta’s voice that promised that if Koschei so much as deigned to let him he’d be on his knees in an instant, making amends for all his careless words, making something better and stronger between them than he could have with anyone else.

 

Koschei heard an absolute dismissal. He blushed, embarrassed to be called on his crush on Theta, humiliated at being so casually denied. Koschei was crushed. It seemed brutally unfair that someone could know him so completely, understand him so perfectly, and yet not want him at all.

 

He was assaulted with the image of Theta wrapped around someone who, in his mind, had no face, no quality of any kind, and obviously no soul with which to intuitively ascertain that Theta wasn’t supposed to be with anyone but Koschei. He unwillingly visualized Theta wrapping his mouth around someone else’s cock. He could see the other boy’s eyes closing in bliss, like they did when Theta ate the English sweets his mother sent him in care packages, which Theta particularly fancied and Koschei particularly enjoyed watching him eat.

 

For an instant Koschei allowed himself to believe in sympathetic magic. Koschei hoped if Theta’s mouth cradled anyone else’s flesh he’d choke on it. He hoped if Theta touched anyone else’s skin it’d singe his fingers. He’d take a Theta who only came to him as a last resort, out of desperation, over no Theta at all. He had, he supposed, more need than pride.

 

“Where are you going?” Koschei asked, almost meekly.

 

“He asked me to lunch.” Theta said softly, unapologetic. “Said he likes my company. Thinks I’m promising.”

 

“Have fun,” Koschei said hollowly, “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

 

 

 

 

 

***

 

 

They’d had tea and lunch and long afternoons that spiraled into evening as Theta skipped his other classes and the Master drug out the length of his plan, unraveling what he’d done the day before due to some newly apprehended complication.

 

The Master dallied and knew he did. He worked like a knitter who’d dropped a stitch rows back, like Penelope. He felt for her, in some ways. Always waiting for a clever, reckless traveler who might never come back, who rewarded devotion with dalliance, who couldn’t even apprehend the kind of loyalty it took to keep pulling at the thread every night. To keep asking in hopes of a different answer.

 

Whole intoxicating weeks: a long, slow seduction with words, with senses, never crossing the line. Despite how when Theta looked at him like he was everything he wanted to crash through the line and consume all the innocence and love that lay on the other side, just out of his reach as always. They played at being the Master and his devoted (beloved) companion. As it should have been and never was.

 

They talked. They talked for hours, and Theta shyly articulated his unorthodox thoughts on sonic wave structure. The Master smiled and corrected him on a point or two and gave him a bit of direction, helped him grasp something he’d not been able to on his own. If the design they refined as they talked wasn’t quite a sonic screwdriver, then it was the gamete of one. A few of the issues impeding its realization were sorted with the mechanisms he used in his own TCE, just as the TCE was descended from the Master’s observation of the screwdriver’s wave pulse in action.

 

Paradoxes could tie up neatly like that, when you were lucky.

 

Theta’s clever words pried open the Master’s restraint (he knew better than to say too much, so he tried to say very little, but Theta would have none of it) like grasping, deft fingers. The Master spoke more and more honestly than he’d meant to about his travels. It was easy to talk when one’s audience was a lovely, eager, admiring boy who soaked up all of your stories with glee and used them to fuel his dream of getting off-planet someday.

 

Theta chased him through comparative folklore and on into comparative literature proper. They argued about Twelfth Night, which Theta didn’t appreciate quite as he should. Theta plucked himself up for a good sound row with his professor, and the Master wondered how the Doctor could so easily deny how good they were together. Even young, the Doctor was cleverer than he had any right to be.

 

_Seventeen,_ he reminded himself as Theta cleared the table after tea and tossed an adoring smile back over his shoulder at his professor, _Congratulations are in order. You’ve gone and effectively taken a child bride. Well,_ he amended, _not taken. Not just yet_. He remembered perfectly what day he’d have to act. He had to time everything perfectly, within a short window of hours, if he wanted to deliver Theta back to his younger self on schedule.

 

He’d acquired a couch in his cottage’s living room, and he and Theta sat close together on it and read as the suns’ doubled light died and the fire in his hearth waxed in tandem.

 

When they worked there, he smothered distinctly inappropriate impulses to simply pull Theta onto his lap. Imagining settling the boy on his cock and watching his face while he took him, or remembering other days, other couches, Theta riding him and twining in for a kiss, was hardly conducive to a properly academic afternoon. Plus one would think that at this age he could control such urges with a modicum more decorum than he’d managed when he still thought of himself as Koschei.

 

“I don’t like poetry,” Theta fussed at the Master’s choice of lesson topic, plopping onto the couch with ill grace, his face falling into a pout.

 

“Now now,” he caught Theta’s chin with one hand and Theta swore one of his hearts broke because it was Koschei’s gesture. And it reminded him of how much he loved Koschei, who withdrew from him more every day now, angry, Theta figured, at feeling excluded. Yet he couldn’t deny he felt very strongly for this man.

 

Theta had never before considered himself disloyal. It was an uncomfortable, poorly fitting garment. He wore his ambivalence guiltily, but couldn’t stop himself from wanting. He hated himself, but he loved this. Loved them. What did it matter though, he wondered bleakly. Neither of them cared about his unsolicited longing, neither could ever reciprocate his desire.

 

“You just don’t know anything about poetry,” the Master chastised, and his hand dropped, “And ignorance isn’t hatred, is it, Theta?” Theta shook his head no, rebuked.

 

“Poetry,” the Master continued, assured of Theta’s full attention by the rapt gaze the boy fastened on the Master’s expressive face, “Is structure married to creative impulse. Freedom in lines. The unstoppable wedded to the immovable, producing the apogee of the possible. Poetry is the surest route to the sublime. You should come to know something of that.”

 

“Will you,” Theta spoke around the cottony length of his tongue in his suddenly dry mouth, “read something to me?”

 

The Master arched a teasing eyebrow and laughed. “I’m not a performer for your amusement, my dear.”

 

“I know that!” Theta corrected himself hastily. He’d noticed his favorite professor had a particular abhorrence of being laughed at, and respected it as any child did the peccadilloes of a beloved elder. “I just think you’ve got an excellent voice. It would be pleasant to hear you read.” Theta was convinced that if his cheeks got any hotter he’d spontaneously combust.

 

The Master brushed a hand over Theta’s tousled hair indulgently. “Maybe someday, if you’re especially good.”

 

 

***

 

 

He and Koschei had just had a real, honest to Rassilon fight. Koschei had positively screamed at him. Him! Koschei had never so much as raised his voice to him before! And about something as stupid as Theta mentioning he might not go home for break, casually suggesting that he might stay over in the dorms alone and catch up on work and finish a special project for xenolinguistics instead.

 

Koschei had been mocking, livid and said some incredibly unkind things about not wanting Theta’s company anyway that had demonstrated to Theta more clearly than Koschei’s indifference ever could how little Koschei feelings aligned with his own.

 

He’d stumbled out to his favorite professor’s cottage, needing to talk to someone who wasn’t tired of hearing Theta panic about how remote Koschei was getting. The fight left him craving the emotional high an hour with the older man always gave him. The tacit rush when their hands brushed over a book. The warm pleasure of his company.

 

The Master had opened the door before Theta could pound on it because he’d seen him through the window, pelting down the hill like he was being chased. He’d tsked. Boys and their melodrama. Well, he supposed the two of them weren’t doing much better now, actually. Only his contemporary Doctor didn’t harbor any such intense passion for him. The Master felt he would have known if the Doctor had any impulse to return to his younger days, simply because he looked so hard for any such tell. His current Doctor, it seemed, was a sphinx without a secret.

 

Theta stood there with a fist raised to knock and incomparably sad eyes. “Poor thing,” the Master clucked. He felt for Koschei, who had literally (as he wrapped a comforting arm around Theta’s shoulders and drew him into the house) sent Theta running into another’s arms. Oh how he’d kicked himself for it in the morning.

 

The Master winced remembering the row in question, remembering how furious he’d gotten, and the how truly sorry he’d been, then how worried and finally how poisonously jealous when Theta hadn’t stumbled back in until morning.

 

“You look a fright. And here I’ve said you always look well. Have some tea, calm down and make me honest.”

 

Theta gulped down the Trion chai, then moved slower, taking sips.

 

“I’m sorry to bother you like this—” he started in.

 

“You’re never a bother to me,” the Master corrected, sipping his own tea with delicate grace. Theta’s eyes fell on the open book on the arm of the chair by the window.

 

He didn’t think about why that chair always faced the window. In fact it was positioned so that someone occupying it might better track his arrival. The Master’s work was long since completed: his TARDIS pacified and the data he sought securely in his grasp.

 

Still he didn’t leave. He’d been waiting to play his own role, and he thought he might have lingered even if he hadn’t known he must. Tonight, he knew, he recaptured something he’d lacked for centuries. And that was a prize worth waiting for.

 

“What were you reading?” Theta asked, wanting not to think about the fight, which he helplessly replayed in his head, persistent and droning as hold music. The Master chuckled lightly, and Theta wanted to twine into the sound like a cat seeking caresses.

 

“An old man’s poems. Nothing that would interest you.”

 

“You always interest me,” Theta said, quiet and intent. “Read one to me? Please?”

 

“Do you think you’ve been especially good, then?” The Master asked, mock stern.

 

“I think,” Theta caressed the rim of his mug with a finger and stared at the table’s wood grain, “That’d I’d really like to hear your voice right now.” His accent was so like Koschei’s, and his voice was dark and full, like sleep and sex and layered whispers. It comforted him and confused him all at once, and he needed it because Koschei had screamed at him and Theta needed to purge the sound of it, still ringing in his ears like blasphemy.

 

“You flatter me,” the Master muttered, taking up the book anyway.

 

“Margaret,” he began, looking up to make it clear just who he was addressing, “Are you grieving over Goldengrove unleaving? Leaves, like the things of man, you with your fresh thoughts care for, can you?

 

“Ah! As the heart grows older it will come to such sights colder by and by, nor spare a sigh, though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie; and yet you will weep and know why. Now no matter, child, the name: Sorrows springs are the same. Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed what heart heard of, ghost guessed: It is the blight man was born for, it is Margaret you mourn for.” The Master finished reading, snapped the book shut and put it aside on the shelf. He glanced at Theta, seemingly awaiting a response.

 

For the first time in his young life Theta conceived of how small his light burned against the backdrop of the stars. How brief he was. He understood, as happens to boys his age, for the first time, that he (he himself, with all his hopes and dreams and thoughts—oh it had seemed _academically_ true before, but personally so impossible!) would someday die _._ Theta felt the absolute centrality of getting the burning feeling licking up the insides of his hearts transmuted into action.

“I want you,” Theta announced, voice trembling through the words. But still he said them.

 

“Do you now?” The Master asked, so polite. Theta nodded mutely and held out his hand. The Master took it and stroked a thumb over the smaller knuckles.

 

“Well, then,” the Master said.

 

Are you sure, he asked, and Theta said yes clear and true. Do you want this, do you want me, and do you think you’re old enough to know, then? Yes and yes and yes. The Master made a meal of Theta’s acquiescence. He savored the clarity and honesty of Theta’s desire. He saved it in himself as a balm to all the wounds the Doctor would inflict on him, as a talisman against all the Doctor’s future ‘no’s.

 

He led Theta by the hand back into the dark-green walled bedroom and laid him on the bed. He undressed him, and, crouched above the boy, let Theta’s small, un-calloused hands work open the buttons at his collar, shivered when Theta kissed the skin beneath and looked up at him bewildered, not knowing what to do next. Tenderly, he smoothed a hand across Theta’s temple.

 

“I’m scared.” Theta admitted. And what must it be like to be so unashamed, the Master wondered, so trusting?

 

“I would never hurt you,” the Master offered softly, and it was the best lie he’d ever told.

 

Theta was naked and the Master was still clothed, if severely disheveled, and he smiled gently in response to Theta’s clumsy attempts to push at his shoulders and shove the fabric off, leaned back and did it himself.

 

He leaned in and kissed Theta, not as he’d imagined he might, with all the frustration of his unmended hearts screaming out against the man who’d rent them, but with all the headiness of everything he felt for his absent partner, and in loving memory of the boys they’d been. He could be gentle enough, the Master considered wistfully, to atone for everything he was going to do to him in a few hours, in a few centuries.

 

He took a jar of salve from the bedside and coated his fingers with it. He traced along the rim of Theta’s entrance. The Master pushed his way in with one finger and waited patiently for Theta’s eyes, which had flung wide with shock, to smooth closed with comfort and then tighten with desire. He used his free hand to pin Theta’s bobbing hips down to the bed.

 

“I don’t even,” Theta half laughed to himself, beginning to squirm on the solitary finger, so the Master slid another in to teach the boy something about impertinence, “Know your proper name.”

 

He curled his fingers and listened to Theta’s complaint dissolve into gasps. “I think you’ll find Master will suffice here as well,” he grinned, enjoying the fondly remembered view: Theta bucking beneath him, joyful. It was a reminder of when their love had been so uncomplicated by regret and hate, so unadaulteratedly good.

 

He held himself still at the entrance, and before he’d even asked Theta threw his arms around his neck. “I’m sure,” Theta kissed the corner of his mouth, licked until it slid open and met his own full on. “I’m sure,” Theta whispered when they parted.

 

The Master slid in slowly, letting the boy adjust, feeling so proud of the way Theta’s lips fluttered with pain, yet he didn’t cry out, and Theta’s eyes met his with determination, though their pupils dilated with as much pain as arousal. The Master wrapped a hand around the boy’s twitching cock and set about making the virgin comfortable. After a minute Theta nodded, and the Master withdrew and thrust, slowly, keeping an eye on the boy’s face to make sure it was all right.

 

“Relax,” he used a touch of hypnotic suggestion, taking advantage of Theta’s trusting gaze to make this easier for him. “Just relax. I have you.” And he did. He thrust shallowly. Theta started to mewl and intuitively work back against him, just slightly shifting to push back instead of lying there like a doll. The Master smirked at the beginnings of what would become the Doctor’s fiercely inventive, fully engaging technique.

 

He plunged in, sinking deeper with every roll of his hips and Theta came, splattering the Master’s absently stroking hand, mouth a big surprised O. The Master laughed, not unkindly, and muttered ‘oh _Theta_ ’ and continued to work towards his own climax. The boy under him was shaking like a live wire as his over-sensitive nerve endings got a rush of stimulation they’d never before been asked to handle.

 

He held up his cum-slick hand to Theta’s mouth, and Theta looked at him bewildered. “Go on,” he encouraged, and Theta’s tongue, cat like, darted out to taste it, looking up at him for approval and assurance that he was doing the right thing, “Good boy,” the Master muttered smugly, eyes bright with pride for his talented pupil.

 

Theta, with the resilience of young boys, recovered and began to pant and squirm his way towards another orgasm. Completely gone, with no real idea what he was saying, Theta called out ‘Master’ and ‘Koschei’ indiscriminately, and the Master was thoroughly amused.

 

He pushed into Theta’s mind and Theta’s eyes flew open and his lips landed on a ‘Master’ and he clenched in an immediate, powerful surge of mental energy and physical high that propelled the Master right along with him. Breathing hard, Theta drifted down. The Master wasn’t a lot more controlled himself.

 

“Oh god. You can _do_ that?” Theta asked when he could talk again. The Master rolled them over so that Theta (still shorter than him, he was gratified to note) was on top.

 

“It _would_ seem so.” The Master admitted breathily.

 

“That was—I don’t have. And you—” Theta’s body, which had been infused with adrenaline, hormones and mental stimulation beyond its capacity to process, suddenly collapsed into sobs.

 

“What’s wrong?” The Master ran a hand down the flustered boy’s back. If Theta took the opportunity to display astounding prescience and denounce him, say this had all been a mistake and flounce off, the Master was going to be severely annoyed.

 

“Nothing!” Theta insisted stubbornly. The Master rolled his eyes.

 

“In most of the universe's cultures it's considered impolite to lie to someone who's inside you. I say this for your future edification. And you’re mentally unwound enough that I can _feel_ you lying. Sex tends to do that.”

 

“I’ll not blather on about my problems, not to you of all people!”

 

“I think you’ll find I’m long inured to your prattle,” he teased, “So I suggest you tell me. Or, oh I don’t know, I’ll flunk you or something.”

 

“I’m going to come off an insensitive git.” Theta, rather amusingly, appeared to be making a bid to hide by tucking his head up under the Master’s chin.

 

“Again, inured.”

 

“It’s, it’s just—look, you should know I’m in love with my best friend. But I think I love you too, and I can’t believe we just, I mean, and you—and I’d do _anything_ for him and Koschei doesn’t even _care!_ ” the boy paused for breath and seemed to recover himself a touch.

 

“I’m sorry,” Theta warbled, “Here you’ve just given me something wonderful and I’m ruining everything, and I’m so, so sorry.”

 

“Shh. Save the apologies for when you’ve really offended me enough to earn them,” the Master stroked the line from the top of the boy’s spine down to his thoroughly interesting young arse, “You’re bound to be worked up after that. Quite a step you’ve just taken, Theta Sigma,” he paused, waiting until the boy’s trembling subsided, “And I wouldn’t worry about your Koschei. I think he’ll come around soon enough.”

 

“But are you—can we do this again? I mean, I love Koschei, but he’s made it clear he isn’t interested. And I love you, and you want me back, and I really—do you love me at all?” Theta asked hopefully, “Even a little?”

 

“You know,” the Master considered, “I don’t think you’re really ever going to grasp how much. But I have to leave the Academy soon,” _before the CIA catches on to the universe’s oddest re-envisioning of Lolita_ , the Master didn’t say, “And I’m afraid we might not see each other for some time.”

 

“What?” You can’t be going! When?” Theta panicked.

 

“Tomorrow actually. The Academy, your excellent company notwithstanding, just isn’t for me. The only thing I’ll regret leaving is you. I’m returning to a project I was working on at the Arcadia lab site. I’m glad you came down tonight, it saved me the trouble of seeking you out.”

 

“That’s so sudden!” Theta tried to work himself up into righteous anger at the Master for not telling him this before, but he felt so vulnerable and peaceful at the moment that it was hard to do anything but lie there and listen to the older man’s heartsbeat.

 

“Change often is, Theta. Can you trust me if I say that, in the near future at least, your life will work out quite perfectly?”

 

“How can you know that?” Theta looked lost.

 

“You’re going to have to trust me. Can you do that?” Theta nodded, but then frowned again.

 

“What will I do without you?”

 

The Master smiled a touch bitterly. “I imagine you’ll survive somehow.”

 

“I could go with you,” Theta offered, shyly, looking not at him but at the wall. His embarrassment was almost comic considering the Master was still buried in him, and rather endearing, “Get off planet. I could be a help to you, you know I could. I’d like that.”

 

The thought of whisking an adoring, mutable Theta away from the planet and training him up to accept the Master’s moral vision of the universe, of _finally_ attaining the Doctor as his willing consort, was nothing if not tempting. But it was of course impossible, and even if it wouldn’t play merry hell with their timelines, back on Earth he had an infuriating bastard all his own, waiting for his next visit with poorly concealed anticipation.

 

Deciding not to spoil his last evening with Theta, he changed the subject. “You know you can’t, love, but it’s dear of you to ask. And I believe you’d miss someone. This boy of yours. What’s so special about him that he has your magpie attention, hmm?”

 

Theta blushed but rallied, ascribing due seriousness to his emotions. “Are you asking why I’m in love with Koschei?”

 

“That _was_ the question, if phrased a trifle more prosaically than I’d managed.”

 

“I love Koschei’s intelligence. I think he’s the brighter of us, but don’t tell him that.”

 

“Oh, I’d never,” the Master assured him, “Though I suspect he might feel the same about you.”

 

“I don’t know about _that._ He’s awfully confident. I love that about him too. Oh, and funny, no one I know is as funny as he is. And creative!”

 

“So not someone you’d ever be able to accurately describe as an ‘unimaginative plodder,’ then?” The Master prompted. If the Doctor thought _that_ jibe hadn’t gotten back to him, he was dead wrong.

 

“Rassilon, no!” Theta corrected, looking scandalized, “My Koschei does _not_ plod.”

 

“I’m glad to hear it,” the Master’s tone was teasing, “Anything else, or have you wound down?”

 

“Not even close! I haven’t started on his body yet—oh! And his mind, in telepathic contact exercises? Tastes like green apples. It’s the damndest thing. So I’ve been chain-eating green apples for months now, don’t laugh.”

 

“Yours is a bit like lavender.” The Master said helpfully, “It’s quite nice.”

 

“I don’t think I can grasp what yours reminded me of.” Theta admitted. The Master refrained from pointing out that, as the stronger telepath who didn’t want to expose his identity, his mental sticky fingers filching the memory back out during contact were the reason for Theta’s gaff.

 

“Not to worry. Perhaps, since I’m going tomorrow and your young man might need some time alone to think after your argument, you should spend the night here?”

 

“I didn’t say we were roommates,” Theta realized.

 

Too clever by half, the Master thought narrowing his eyes, but said “My dear boy, at your age it’s always the roommate. So, will you stay?”

 

“Of course.” Theta snuggled into him, but then popped his head up hopefully. “You know, I have a lot more energy now, I think. I’m not terribly tired is all.”

Remembering Theta staggering into their room looking positively shagged into the ground the next morning, the Master remarked, “You will be. If you’re not tired I think I might have use for you, even at my age. What do you know about fellatio?”

 

“Er, ‘to be safe and treat my partners with respect and care?’ ” The Master chuckled, because he’d be getting that lecture too in about three weeks from a terribly awkward Verity. She’d figured out they were together with her usual intuitive intelligence, and barged into talking to him about it with her usual complete disregard for the consequences. At least the Doctor came by it honest.

 

“How would you feel about a practical lesson?”

 

“Ecstatic?” Theta tried. The Master kissed him soundly.

 

“Right answer. Curl your lips over your teeth, and I _mean_ that, and let’s start by—you like lolly ices?” Theta nodded uselessly—the Master knew he did. Whole summers of his youth had been spent fixated on Theta and his tongue-lathed bright green ice pops. His lips were always stained that electric green after—oh, they’d been green apple flavored! Well wasn’t that flattering.

 

A bit chuffed, the Master continued, “Pretend it’s a lolly ice, then. As I believe I said when we met, I expect you to give me all you’re capable of.”

 

“Yes Master,” Theta smirked wickedly and ducked down. If this didn’t get him through whole hours of the Doctor’s whining about rights and consequences and what all, nothing would.

 

 

***

 

 

Early in the morning Theta slinked into his room, trying to be quiet and botching it. Every article of his clothing was rumpled. He reeked of sex.

 

Koschei had been up on his neatly made bed all night, fully dressed, staring at Theta’s empty spot with a rancorous expression. Waiting.

 

“Morning Koschei,” Theta managed before flopping face down on his bed. To his surprise and annoyance, he was roughly flipped over. Theta moved a bit more towards wakefulness when he processed the rage in Koschei’s eyes.

 

“Your hands are shaking!” Theta cupped them with his own. “Koschei, what’s wrong?”

 

“What’s wrong?” Koschei let out an uncharacteristic high-pitched giggle, “What’s _wrong?_ Were you with whatever the fuck his name was? Did you let him touch you?”

 

“Yeah,” Theta bristled, “Best night of my life, actually. I don’t see what it could possibly matter to you, though. If you’re just going to be prudish about him being a professor, could you possibly freak out over on your bed? Some of us are exhausted. For an older gentleman he thoroughly tired me out.”

 

Koschei raised his hand, trembling, like he wanted to smack the other boy, but instead turned away, pressing his head into his hands as if to relieve some immense internal pressure. Theta stood up and took a step towards his distressed friend.

 

“There’s no need to be so vicious,” Koschei hissed, “Haven’t you done enough? Just—” he tried to breathe, “Just tell me, because I think you owe me an answer, even if you don’t see fit to give me anything else. What about me made me not good enough? What about him was better?”

 

Theta looked at him uncomprehending, and Koschei hated that after what Theta had just done he could still play at being so naïve. Could still look as innocent and untouched as ever he had.

 

“Cat got your tongue, or is it all tuckered out?” Koschei snapped. “It can’t be that hard to tell me, can it? Give me something specific. Whatever it is, is it something I can change?” Koschei swallowed, “Something I can’t? I have to understand how you could do this to me. Remember how you _cried_ when I broke my arm? I let you coddle me all damn week. You wince like it’s yours when I get a headache, even, and now you don’t even have enough sympathy for me to be discreet!”

 

Theta _was_ crying, he noticed absently when he looked up. Great big meaningless crocodile tears slicked his cheeks, varnished them bright and hard and red.

 

“Oh don’t give me that,” Koschei whispered, crossing the distance between them and viciously slamming his mouth down on Theta’s and swallowing the cries, grinding his groin into the other boy’s like he could transfer desire through touch and make Theta feel it just through the sheer intensity of his own need. Koschei broke away and _shook_ Theta.

 

“Why do you hate this? Why couldn’t you want me, Theta?” Koschei asked desperately, almost crying himself, “You didn’t have to love me, I could have lived with less, but why the fuck couldn’t you _want_ me, even a little? How hard is that, hm? How difficult do I make it?”

 

“Koschei, I can want you! I _do._ I always, always do,” Theta responded, “We’re _idiots,_ do you know that? I’m only _crying_ because—how can you not know I only went to him because you don’t notice me? Oh Koschei, I thought you’d _never_ notice me!” He brought Koschei’s hand down from its death grip on his shoulder and put it on his left heart. For Theta it was the truer organ, because both of his parents had it. When he thought, in the human sense, of giving his heart to someone, this was the one he thought of.

 

Koschei stared at Theta’s face and didn’t dare to hope.

 

“I love you.” Theta said plainly, emboldened by a promise made by someone he trusted that, in the near future at least, his life would work out quite perfectly.

 

“Have you somehow missed what everyone knows but you? God,” Theta laughed, “I feel like even the birds in the courtyard and the walls of the room must be onto me. And if you want me, even a little, I’ll never so much as look at anyone else.”

 

“I notice you,” Koschei whispered, “I’ll always notice you. How can you know me like you do and not know _that?_ Theta. I love you. I don’t know if I’m ever going to be able to tell you how much.”

 

“Oh Kosch,” Theta started to stroke the other boy’s erection through his uniform trousers, “Let me start to make it up to you.” And it was Theta’s turn to guide Koschei to the bed by hand, never breaking eye contact. Theta sat down.

 

“Help me out of my clothes?” Theta asked, biting his lip.

 

Koschei worked his way down, peeling off layers of the other boy’s sloppily buttoned clothes. Koschei felt himself getting angry again, because every article seemed guilty, looked as if it had been crumpled carelessly on a floor. But his anger was subsumed by rising wonder as more and more of Theta’s skin was revealed to his eyes, and to his hands.

 

“Can I—” Koschei began, hand hovering above the pale breadth of Theta’s chest. Koschei would never admit to it having shaken slightly, so close to something so long desired.

 

“Yes,” Theta assured him, arching up to make himself more accessible, so that Koschei’s fingers met his skin. He used his own to open Koschei’s curled fingers into a flat palm. With his hand atop Koschei’s, he encouraged that open hand to drag down anywhere, everywhere Koschei liked.

 

“Undress?” Theta asked, “Let me look at you too, Kosch?”

 

Koschei nodded and disrobed quickly, without grace or flare, in a hurry to get back to touching something far more interesting than fabric.

 

When Theta had made a preliminary investigation with his hands and tongue that left Koschei more than a little unsteady on his feet, he swallowed.

 

“I want to do what he did to you,” Koschei muttered, too shy to say ‘I want to fuck his touch off your skin,’ looking at the wood floor and committing a knot in it he’d never noticed before to memory.

 

Kissing Koschei and nodding, Theta lay back, reaching behind his head for a pillow to prop himself up with. “Come here. Touch me.”

 

Koschei’s jabbing, searching fingers were as yet unskilled, and he pried the other boy open a bit too roughly. When he realized his Theta was still wet and stretched, skin glistening with proof of his indiscretion, it was all Koschei to do to keep from screaming. Instead he shoved an unlubricated finger in.

 

Theta gasped at the contact. “Koschei,” he began in a slightly warning tone, but Koschei ignored him and shoved two more fingers in and twisted them frantically, determined to erase all traces of the man who dared touch his stupid, innocent, feckless beloved.

 

“ _Stop_ that, it hurts! _Listen_ to me!” Theta arrested the dark haired boy’s motion with a hand clenched at Koschei’s wrist. “Slower. Gentler. Do it like you love me, Kosch.”

 

“I—I’m sorry,” Koschei muttered, shame faced, withdrawing his hand.

 

“Don’t be, it’s all right,” Theta smiled, a little bit rakishly, “And I don’t remember asking you to go anywhere. I think I’m ready. Have you got anything we can use, because if not, there should be a tin in my bedside table—oh good, you do. Of course you do. Smear that—guh. I see you’ve grasped the principle. Clev—mm. _Mm_. Koschei. Just like that. _God._ Let’s try now.”

 

“I haven’t even asked,” Koschei realized, a little disgusted with himself as the desire to protect Theta, which had been choked out by his anger, flooded back. He began to feel like a right ass. “Do you even want to, now? Aren’t you tired?” Koschei rested his weeping erection on top of Theta’s own and closed his eyes for a moment to savor _that_.

 

Koschei hesitated on the brink, wanting to shove himself in clumsily. But he was still half bitter, not quite ready to forgive and forget having been denied something he felt should have been his by right. Koschei was even afraid he wouldn’t be able to measure up to the skill and experience of Theta’s earlier, older lover, that he couldn’t make it good for Theta because he didn’t yet know what he was doing himself.

 

“Too tired for you?” Theta boggled, “Are you mad? Koschei. I’ve been _dreaming_ about this. Disinterest is one thing you’ll never have to worry about. Come on, stop thinking for once and just—” With that inventive Koschei took himself in hand and pushed in, and Theta promptly shut up and hissed, sore but willing.

 

“How long have you been dreaming?” Koschei asked, taking it slow, because it felt so warm and good but he could see Theta twitching at every drag of his cock inside him, and while he felt an urge to punish the other boy for having run out on him, he didn’t want to break Theta in half. The other boy seemed, despite his recent adventure, impossibly tight.

 

“Since that double full moon night we went swimming in the ocean during the vernal break.”

 

“That,” Koschei gasped, sliding in and out with a bit more tempo now, “Was three summers ago. Why didn’t you _say_ anything?”

 

“Why didn’t _you?_ ” Theta countered, rocking back, “And since we’re on it, when did you decide you might be interested?”

 

“Well,” Koschei buried himself in his friend with a plunge at a new angle that made Theta squeak, “do you mean when I first had an urge to fuck you or when I thought I wanted to be with you? Because I had the latter figured out since I don’t know when, but I wanted to be in you Just. Like. This,” he punctuated with a quick series of thrusts, “when we went hiking and you wanted to explore that limestone cave so badly. You got so excited about it that I thought how cute you’d look bent over a rock formation.

 

“And I wanted you,” Koschei added absently, focused on what his hips were doing and how nothing he’d imagined felt this good, “to do it to me when you got first in the pub quiz and looked so damn _smug_ about it.”

 

“We were thirteen that trip!” Theta gasped, “Koschei, you absolute pervert!”

 

“Shut up and enjoy it,” he growled, “Now, are you ever going to swan off with what’s his name again?”

 

“N-no! You and only you, forever,” Theta promised, looking ready to drop unconscious but still putting in a good effort to hold on.

 

“That’s an awfully long time,” Koschei narrowed his eyes, “Say it again.”

 

“F-forever,” Theta stumbled over the word as Koschei picked up speed.

 

“And whose are you?”

 

“Yours, god, yours, Koschei!”

 

“Good. Keep talking. You can make amends for the rotten night I spent worrying, but it’s going to take you rather a lot of time.”

 

“Sounds fantastic. Time,” Theta grinned cheekily and put a hand to Koschei’s head, slipping in and starting something glorious, “is exactly what we’ve got, love.”

 

 

***

 

 

Centuries later Gallifrey had burned, and some time after that it had been reclaimed.

 

Two men walked along the paths of their old academy. The shorter of them held out a hand to arrest his companion’s progress and pointed down to the empty glen between the copses.

 

“I had you there first,” he pointed out with a smirk.

 

“I do remember, thanks,” his companion rolled his eyes. “You know, it didn’t come to me for the longest time? After that whole Kronos farrago, if I recall. I dropped the test tube I was holding when it hit me. Your best Humbert Humbert cost me a whole day’s worth of work.”

 

“I wondered why you looked so embarrassed to see me again when I turned up at the lunar penal colony.”

 

“Oh be fair, your ludicrous plastic commissioner’s costume carries at least part of the blame for that.”

 

“Touché,” the Master smirked, “I just want to take the opportunity to point out that I had you first. And I’ll have you last. Isn’t that neat? I do love a balanced equation.”

 

“Idiot. You always had me,” the Doctor grumbled and began to walk on, “If you’d asked nicely you could have had me properly in that body. You know, the _corresponding_ me, rather than having to resort to something distinctly statutory.”

 

“What, really?” The Master didn’t budge. “You’re joking. You would have thrown me out on my ear if I’d so much as leered.”

 

“ _If?_ You were a leering machine! It was all leather gloves and cigars and emphatic leering with you! Still is, minus the cigars. And if you’d so much as offered to spend a day with me in lieu of plotting the Rube Goldberg conquest of Earth you could have had me six ways to Sunday. Boy or man, I always did fancy the Nehru jacket. Well. And the man in it, even if you’re thick as a brick.”

 

“Good album,” the Master responded automatically, “So even while I was mocking past-us for not being able to discuss and consummate their relationship—you know what I hate, Doctor?”

 

“The film _Flash Gordon_ for absolutely ruining a beard you’d otherwise have loved to grow?”

 

“Yes, as well you know. But I was going to say dramatic irony.”

 

“Ah. Considering how frustrated I remember your little social calls leaving me in that body, I think I agree. But buck up! We’re certainly not ruing our chastity these days! Want to go re-christen every place we’ve ever done it on Gallifrey? Ring in the new model?”

 

“That,” the Master was dizzied by the logistics, “Is going to take rather a lot of time.”

 

“Time,” the Doctor grinned, stepping close enough to dart in for a kiss, “is exactly what we’ve got, love.”

 


End file.
